Jodi Picoult
How would you feel if you knew that the only reason you were conceived was as a donor for your sibling? For the entire thirteen years of her life, Anna Fitzgerald, the main character in Jodi Picoult’s best seller, My Sister’s Keeper, has been the main source of her older sister’s survival. Her sister Kate, three years older than she, has leukemia, and without the stem cells and the bone marrow from Anna, she cannot survive. Told uniquely from multiple first person points of view, this is a novel replete with suspense, irony, romance, compassion, humor, disappointment . . . and surprises. At the plot’s center are the main character Anna and her lawsuit against her parents Sara and Brian Fitzgerald. She is suing for medical emancipation, her right to make her own decisions about her body. This is the story of the family’s struggle for survival at all costs. Each chapter features the first person point of view of one of the characters: Anna, the main character; her lawyer, Campbell Alexander; her older sister Kate; her older brother Jesse; her mother Sara; her father Brian; and Julia, Anna’s court-appointed guardian ad litem.
To deal with the multiple problems that make up the complexity of conflicts in the novel as each of the principal characters interacts with and around the main character, Anna, the author chooses to tell the story of Anna’s fight for medical emancipation through multiple first person points of view. Every one of the principal characters has a problem of his or own to resolve, and the first person narration brings to the novel the subjectivity of each of the characters as each viewpoint is explored.
The lawyer, Campbell Alexander, provides much of the humor in the novel at just the right point—when emotions are running high and things seem to be at their lowest. He humorously dispels the myth that the only people with service dogs are blind people. At various points in the novel, in response to his dog’s being denied entry, he states, “This is a service dog.” Always their response is, “You’re not blind.” He always responds humorously: “I’m not . . . I’m a recovering alcoholic. He gets between me and a beer.” Another time is the explanation that he actually has an iron lung and Judge has been specially trained to guard against magnets. He tells another person he’s a lawyer, and his dog chases ambulances for him. Everyone, including the reader, is surprised when the truth of his service dog is revealed.
Perhaps this book and the subsequent movie will serve to make other parents think before they birth a child for the purpose of saving another child’s life. Perhaps they will think about the cost to their other children when one child seems always to be at the center of attention. In spite of the great love the parents have for each child, there is often that feeling of neglect on the part of the other children. We see this lack in Anna’s brother Jesse as we watch the trouble he gets into as he takes a back seat to terminally ill Kate, his sister.
Reviewed by Lee L. Peoples
